What can be said about Cadiz Carnival? Only that we’ve heard about it all year but never had any idea what we were in for. Yes we heard that it was a party all night long and that it was a complete “locura” (trans.: Craziness, like shave-your-head-Britney-Spears-style-crazy) but I don’t think we really quite got it…
So Saturday night we get on the 8pm train. We got to the station relatively early so we didn’t think there would be THAT many people on the train. Needless to say, when we got there, there was only sitting room on the ground left but everyone was in costume and was ready for a good time.
Now would be a good time to mention what our motley crew comprised. Rachel, whose costume came mostly from her host dad’s Guardia Sevilla uniform (when I say mostly I mean everything except for an enormous pair of fake tits that were a source of laughs all evening) was the perfect foil for my convict attire. We were joined by Superman, a boat captain, a Barbie, an Indian, a Priest, a cat, Zorro and a few others.
Back to the train… What should have been foreshadowing enough was that the only available seats on the train for us, since it had stopped several times before our station, was next to a guy dressed as a giant green marijuana leaf, another one dressed as a box of rolling papers and the girlfriend of one of them dressed as a Zippo lighter. Though we did not partake in that particular offer, this is the sort of thing we were up against in the mean streets of Cadiz.
So God help you if you need the toilets, they are on a client-only basis which means if you’re not a client you must use the street/parking lot/whatever you can find… We made it until 8am, at which point Burger King had seen us a few times; we’d eaten several orders of Churros and Chocolate and used the ‘street toilets’ more times that can be counted. We dragged ourselves back to the train station where while I slept I almost got thrown up on by a drunk/motion-sick Spaniard who made it just past my seat and on to the people behind me.
When we got back, I tried my luck and biked back to my house from the station. Once there it was two poached eggs and toast down the hatch and the eternal sleep until 6pm where I got up to pee, shower and then went back to bed.
That, my friends, is the Cadiz Carnival. The one time of the year where, so I’m told, social graces don’t exist and everyone dresses so that the members of the upper echelons can loiter in a drunken state with the lowlife riffraff and pee on the streets and no one can or would care to tell the difference.
I should also say that the Spanish get away with many costumes that just would not be acceptable in Canada due to our staunch standards of political correctness. For instance, imagine wandering the streets with the likes of Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, etc. complete with all the trimmings of the stereotypes accompanying the depictions of their various ethnic backgrounds (head cloths, hooka pipes, turbans, mustaches, etc.). Seeing the Pope, Osama and a variety of men-dressed-as-women-dressed-as-men pound back beers together, now that’s a different version of world peace altogether.
This weekend I also went to Seville’s neighbouring town of Italica to see the ancient Roman amphitheatre, which is very well preserved, as well as to Marchena to see the San Luis church and monastery with my old prof, Rafa. Both outings were lovely and much more low key than the monster that was CADIZ CARNIVAL! But all's fair in the name of an authentic cultural experience...
Up next... what led to Javier, the Stripper Roommate, moving out... Thank God.
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